wikis

MeatballWiki is a wiki dedicated to online communities, culture, and hypermedia. Founded in 2000, its original goal was to focus on collaborative hypermedia, but current topics range from intellectual property to cyberpunk to the confusion of URIs. According to founder Sunir Shah, it runs "a hacked-up version of UseModWiki".[1]

The Founding of MeatballWiki

MeatballWiki was started in 2000 by Ontarian website administrator Sunir Shah on Clifford Adams's Internet domain usemod.com.[2] It began as a friendly fork from the original WikiWikiWeb created by Ward Cunningham, in order to provide a place to have discussions about Wiki outside of the original WikiWikiWeb.[3]

Ward Cunningham created WikiWikiWeb with a primary focus on computer programming design patterns. While the scope of WikiWikiWeb was broad and free-wheeling, users who strayed too far from the focus were considered by some to be WikiSquatting, which means developing their own separate community within the WikiWikiWeb. Some users felt that those who wanted to engage in discussions about the wiki itself and how it operated, referred to as WikiOnWiki discussions, were going beyond the scope of WikiWikiWeb.[4] MeatballWiki was therefore created as a place for such discussions.

“Community discussions about how to run the community itself should be left here. Abstract discussions, or objective analyses of community are encouraged on MeatballWiki.
—Sunir Shah, WikiWikiWeb page[1]

MeatballWiki and UseModWiki

See also: UseModWiki

MeatballWiki was previously located on Clifford Adams's Internet domain usemod.com, on which Adams also runs the UseModWiki forum, which is a wiki about the UseModWiki wiki engine. MeatballWiki and UseModWiki are thus two separate wikis that ran on the same Internet domain and using identical UseModWiki software. [2]

As host to numerous wiki-related project journals, MeatballWiki has in turn influenced much of the design of UseModWiki. For most of 2001, UseModWiki was also used to run all versions of Wikipedia. These interrelationships led to MeatballWiki exercising a major influence on the Wikipedia community, as shown by numerous references to MeatballWiki on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Meta-Wiki site.

MeatballWiki and the Wiki Community

“What differentiates MeatballWiki from many online meta-communities is that participants spend much of their time talking about sociology rather than technology, and when they do talk about technology, they do so in a social context.
—K. T. L. Vaughan et al[5]

The original intent of MeatballWiki was to offer observations and opinions about wikis and their online communities, with the intent of helping online communities, culture and hypermedia. Being a community about communities, MeatballWiki has become the launching point for other wiki-based projects and a general resource for broader wiki concepts.[3] It describes the general tendencies observed on wikis and other online communities, for example the life cycles of wikis and people's behavior on them.[2]

The MeatballWiki members have created a “bus tour” of wikis,[6] which begins at the MeatBall:TourBusStop.

One of the key concepts on MeatballWiki is barn raising, which is when a community gathers to take on a specific goal, providing a social event wherein members of a community learn about each other and become knit together.[3]

Sunir Shah created the first internet Barnstar award on MeatballWiki.[7][8] These awards recognize and celebrate specific individuals within the community who helped with monumental tasks or made other large contributions. The concept of "Barnstars" has spread to many wikis, including Wikipedia[9] and wikiHow.[10]

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Meatball Wiki. C2.com (2006-03-27). Retrieved on 2007-12-28.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 MeatballWiki. WikiIndex (2007-10-04). Retrieved on 2007-12-28.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 UseMod.com. AboutUs (2007-07-28). Retrieved on 2007-12-28.
  4. ↑ m:Transwiki:Constructionism and reductionism (wiki)
  5. ↑ Vaughan, K. T. L.; et al. (2004). "Beyond the Sandbox: Wikis and Blogs That Get Work Done (SIG STI)". ASIST 2004 Annual Meeting; "Managing and Enhancing Information: Cultures and Conflicts" (ASIST AM 04). Retrieved on 2007-12-28.
  6. ↑ Matias, Nathan (2003-11-03). What is a Wiki?. SitePoint. Retrieved on 2007-12-28.
  7. ↑ Wikimania 2006: Archived Toronto bid, Wikimedia
  8. ↑ User:SunirShah, Wikipedia
  9. ↑ Harper, Martin. "Attempting to use Meatball's BarnStar on Wikipedia might help here. I've uploaded it - must add some appropriate text and start awarding it." (Archived) WikipediaExile Brainstorm Page
  10. ↑ How to Award a wikiHow User a Barnstar, wikiHow


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